I spent a pleasant two hours digging us out from about a foot of snow this morning (drifts were in the two foot range), and given that this system treated us to rain, wet snow, ice pellets then powdery, blowing snow, I was not surprised to count over a half-dozen cars off the road on the way to work this morning.

My own Winter travel stories include surviving Snow Jam ’82 (4 hours to make the normal 20-minute trip home) as well as making the drive from Georgia Tech to our home in South Carolina in the middle of a snowstorm that had passenger cars and semi trucks in the ditches by the hundreds – and I made the trip in my Vega to boot!

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When I was in college I drove all the way across South Dakota in a blizzard. In a 1980 Mustang. No cell phones back then. At some points my buddy had to roll down the window and guide me along the white line because I couldn’t see past the hood. On one icy overpass the wind started blowing me sideways and almost into an oncoming car.

Certainly not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I at least had warm clothes and food with. And we made it, eventually.

I went to Newfoundland and then to Labrador last year in late May – early June. +2º C that felt like -6º C. Had an icebreaker in front of our ferry when I was crossing to Blanc Sablon, QC. Luckily I insisted on changing a Ford Focus to a F-150 4×4. Had 2 flat tires in 24 hours. Than a blowout on 430, about 170 km from Deer Lake. It took 4.5 hours for the road side assistance from the rental company to locate me, until local flat bed driver called me to find out where was I.

But local people are super nice! Someone let me use his spare tire, so I could get into town.

Couple of days before Xmas ’75, me and my Dad are in my ’75 Rabbit heading west on I-40 on the uphill into Albuquerque. Three lanes of ice; I’m probably the only FWD car on that bit of road. We just zip in between all the RWD iron that is sideways to the lane and spinning tires and all the other stunts. Next morning the road is still an ice rink, I’m watching this ’69 Impala in the rear view mirror make a lane change. I’m thinking, ‘that’s too much steering input’ as it starts doing 360’s down the road and then disappears in a huge wave of snow as she hits the shoulder. All that morning it was cars trapped on the shoulder, or upside down. Must have been one every mile or so.

Pull into a gas station, 3 Mid Eastern looking guys are taping (trying to) the windshield back into the crushed roof of their ’73 Capri. They’d rolled it and with 3 of them and some help had gotten it back on the wheels. I asked how far they had to go; LA!

Late 1990s was working in the college maintenance department at Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio. Snowstorm started during the workday, blowing snow, blizzard like conditions, many highways being shutdown. Level 2 (no non-essential travel) snow emergency declared before the end of day and that night a Level 3 (if we find you on the road we will arrest you) was declared.

I was trying to make it the 30 min drive home (took roughly two hours) in my 1982 Chevrolet Celebrity along state highways that had anywhere from eight inches to a foot or more of snow on them depending on how the wind was blowing along that stretch. I watched a Mercury Village minivan get off course, drop onto the shoulder, over-correct, and roll onto its roof in the field adjacent the highway. I didn’t stop only because three other vehicles immediately did and I didn’t need to make the traffic blockage bigger.

Last year I woke on a cold morning that was scheduled to be a principal meeting day (which do not get delayed or cancelled come heck or high water.) Outside nothing had fallen (checking at 5:30 am).

Got dressed, got showered, had breakfast and got ready to leave at 7:15 am. A spate of ice/snow/rain mix had fallen and I had only my 4×2 F150 to get me there. 30 min drive took an hour and I saw 6 vehicles off the side of the road on a 26 mile drive. Every time I hit a bump in the truck the rear end would try to kick sideways. I had to lockout overdrive to keep the transmission from shifting from OD to D whenever I tapped the pedal. (The dim witted 4-speed tries to grab overdrive at 35 mph!)

I had two or three such mornings last year and it was one of the reasons for my buying an AWD vehicle during the summer. With my contract your expected to be present for work even if you might be the only one in the building when you get there.

Graduated college in December of ’87. January of ’88 I started driving west on I-80 for the hell of it – no particular destination in mind. Driving “crispy critter” a 1982 Chevette with a stick shift and no cruise control. Had my winter camping gear with me just in case.

Somewhere west of Laramie, WY, while following some trucks the snow closed in and visibility went to pot. Around the same time I started losing what little power the Chevette had and could no longer kept up with the crawling trucks. I pulled over to avoid getting hit (which wasn’t really a risk as unbeknownst to me the freeway had been closed so no one was going to come up behind me.) Engine would rev, sluggishly, but not pull much of a vacuum (had full gages in the car.) Weird. Really didn’t want to stay there.

In the end it was the entire air intake system from front of car up to and all around the air filter full of (now) packed snow. First big clues was the milkshake-sucking sound I heard while prying the air cleaner cover off of the carb.

After that it was just dealing with carb icing every 15 minutes or so…stop, let the ice melt, drive for another 15 minutes on an end-of-the-world empty highway.

Oh, and get a new hot-air stovepipe for the ThermAC system at the next auto parts store just a quick four hours down the highway.

A long trip across Iowa in a freezing rain just after Christmas in 2000 probably counts as the longest sweating palm drive I’ve had. In a 1999 Chrysler T&C mini with front wheel drive.

A long trip through rural Kansas in deep snow in a 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis was also memorable.

Skidding through an intersection this morning with zero stopping power in my 2002 Durango was embarrassing. I was bringing home my middle child from the DMV where we were getting her lerner’s permit thanks to a school snow day. So much for 36 years of experience! Classic SUV driver error, all go and no slow.

Buffalo, NY November 20, 2000. Buffalo was hit with a snow storm that started at 1PM and ended around 6PM…In 5 hours over 2 feet of snow fell….that’s almost 5″ per hour.
As the snow piled up everyone from downtown started to leave work….almost 50,000 in the downtown area. I picked up mu BMW 318ti at the local garage where I’d just had my snow tires installed. When I pulled out on to Main Street traffic was already virtually stopped.
Cars were getting stuck and visibility was near zero. After 4 hours of traveling about a 1/2 mile I pulled onto a side street and abandoned my car like thousands other. I walked a few blocks to a nearby tavern where dozens of others took refuge. Ran into friends, co workers and even my sister. We drank for about 3 hours expecting to stay the night, when someone mentioned the subway was still running. The station was only 3 blocks away and my house was only 1 block from the northern most station. My sister and I grabbed are almost full beers walked to the station and headed home with refreshments.
The next day the plows were out clearing the streets, I took a shovel on the subway, found my car, dug it out and a few hours later was safe and sound.

In March 1989, I packed all my worldly belongings into a 1988 Mazda 323 sedan and drove from Fairfax, Virginia to Austin, Texas where I had a new job.

That’s about 1500 miles by interstate, which I planned to break into two very full days of driving. The first day I logged about 850 miles and made it to Memphis, where I spent the night. I figured the second day would be a comparative breeze. That’s because I didn’t expect freezing rain and sleet on day two.

By the time I got to Little Rock, it had begun to sleet. (It must have been March 4: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lzk/?n=pns1200histxt.htm). Being young & invincible, I figured I could press on if I drove slowly. Very few other people were dumb enough to drive in that kind of weather. Before long, there was at least 3″ of sleet on the road, but the few cars there were had managed to keep two tracks of mostly clear pavement in the right lane. I kept my 155/80-13 M+S Yokohamas aimed in the center those tracks and probably averaged 10-15 mph. At least I was making forward progress.

That was working OK until the sun started to set. Then even I had enough sense to get off the road. At dusk, I pulled into Sulphur Springs, Texas. There were two motels at the exit. The first one had no rooms. The second one, a Best Western, had one room left, but no power. No power meant the restaurant was closed, and even the vending machine didn’t work. So after white-knuckling thorough an ice storm for several hours, I sat the dark, with an empty stomach, shivering in a cold hotel room until I finally fell asleep.

That’s was my scariest winter drive, but not my scariest drive. Getting fogged in on the I-64 mountain pass between Charlottesville and Staunton, Va., was terrifying. But that will have to wait for the call for fog stories on CC.

That’s the only road I’ve ever driven on that had electric lights instead of reflectors embedded in the lane markers. I really was afraid I’d be part of one of those 30-car pileups they have in there from time to time.

I don’t have anything quite so dramatic, but I did almost drive a whole winter without a heater, because the control valve had crapped out on my Matador (it was a rube-goldberg thermostatically controlled one)

I finally went to the wrecking yard and picked up a plain on/off one from an older Rambler. The guy at the counter found out I’d had no heat all winter, laughed at me (Har Har Har variety of laughter) and gave me the valve.

To be honest, this past Saturday ranks up there. A few inches of unexpected overnight into morning snow didn’t seem like a big deal compared to the 2+ feet we got the beginning of last week. I decided to follow my plan to head to the gym before work. The Y which I go to is nine miles away in the neighboring town.

Heading out, the first couple miles didn’t seem that bad, but I could tell that the roads had not been pre-treated or even plowed yet. They got drastically worse as I made it a bit further, and despite my slow speed and avoidance of hard braking, I was still sliding all over the place on turns and stops. I’m a nervous driver in the snow due to my mishap my first time ever driving in it, and my heart was pounding through this.

Nearing the final stop sign before the gym, a pickup truck takes the corner onto the street I’m on, starts fishtailing and coming right at me. I have to slam on my brakes and of course I start sliding too. He only was able to adjust himself back into his lane with feet to spare. This really set off an anxiety attack, which lasted about 15 minutes, and came back twice later in the day. My chest is getting tight and my heart pounding just as I’m thinking about this again.

For anyone that has seen “Highway Through Hell” on TV. The Coquihalla pass had just opened in the spring of 1986, 70 miles of freeway through British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. Myself and a buddy in my 4 month old Volkswagen GTI complete with summer Pirelli tires driving from Vancouver to Kamloops, early November. A 100 miles east of Vancouver it had been raining a bit and some thunderstorms around. Starting to climb up the pass a a few flakes of snow in the headlights that got worse and worse until the summit it was a whiteout blizzard, no warnings, no snowplows. At the tollbooth we were told more of the same for 30 miles and then black ice. Cars and trucks off the road everywhere…I had the death grip on the wheel all the way through but we made it in one piece. When we got to Merritt on the north end of the pass it was a beautiful starlit evening, cold and dry.
On the return trip 3 days later it was snowing most of the way down from Kamloops but again no trouble however the RCMP were checking for snow tires up at the tollbooth so I got a ticket!

If you are ever up that way again be sure to drive highway 5A between Merritt and Kamloops…beautiful 2 lane with almost no traffic even in summer, love that drive.
Merritt was out of the way until 1986 when the Coquihalla opened and suddenly it was the crossroads that everyone goes through.
As your link shows it’s very dry up there pretty well year round so its great for old cars and trucks.

My worst experience (so far) was last winter, driving back up to school on US 75 and MN 23. I left home while it was still light out, but from my place to the first big town (about 40% of the way there) was complete whiteout conditions, visibility down to about 100 feet and 45 mph straight-line winds. The roads themselves were dry as a bone, but covered in powder so uniformly that it was nearly impossible to see the surface. I seriously considered spending the night in the car (it was about 7:15), but soldiered on when I saw a semi was leaving town and drove the next 43 miles to school about 30 feet behind it, going about 30 mph. When I pulled off Hwy 23, the truck kept going! I don’t know where it was going from there, but I’m certainly thankful I had someone to follow for that harrowing hour and a half.

Driving back to Brooklyn from Smithtown, Long Island in a blizzard in late 2009. The Sagitos, Northern Parkway , LIE and Southern State were snowing up fast and littered with accidents. I had to take the Sunrise Highway-basically a wide street with four lanes a side to the Belt Parkway. I had to get out at least four times to clear the snow off the back of my 2004 Saturn before I even got to the Belt.The Belt Parkway was so bad with about zero visibility. I has to get off at Pennsylvania Av. and go home by street.What usually was about an hour and ten minute trip from my home near the Verrazano Bridge took well over four hours.Was lucky to get home alive with my car-seriously damaged in an accident about a month before-in one piece. Worst driving “experience” I ever had. White knuckles all the way.Next day,Sunday saw at least fifteen inches of snow. I should have turned around and went back to my relative`s house and stayed there overnight. Sorry I didn`t.

I was still learning to drive in the winter of 67-68. I had driven with my father to a city about an hour and a half away and about 9:30 pm we started towards home. Our route was hilly and mountainous and 2 lanes and it had snowed and was snowing again on the way back. I don’t know if my Dad was just tired or if he thought I needed the experience but I wound up driving our 64 Country Squire that night.
Anyway, at some point my father mumbled something that I heard as “….you need to go a bit faster…” and within minutes of speeding up on a very snowy road we slide sideways off the road narrowly missing a bridge abutment.

Many years ago I drove regularly to a town in southwestern Ontario. I did the trek so often I discovered a short cut that shaved a few minutes and miles off the drive.

This short cut was a rural concession road that ran parallel to the main highway. A railroad track crossed both roads. The crossing over the highway was fully signaled with crossing lights, bells and gates. The crossing over the rural road was not. The highway was regularly snow plowed. The rural road was not.

It had been snowing all day – the tail end of a snowstorm – the day I made the trek. I knew I should have been sticking to driving the main roads, but I’d grown so used to taking the short cut I just shrugged “whatever” and ignored my own advice.

I cut over to the concession road and began the drive north into town. I noticed the tall snow banks on each side of the road that had been created by even limited snow plow passes. It felt like I was driving in a viaduct, but the road was lightly snow covered and navigable. I couldn’t see any landmarks for orientation and assurance (this was in the days before cell phones and GPSes). About a mile or so up the road, the wind suddenly picked up, whipping the snow on the banks into a frenzy, causing a zero visibility white-out.

I was driving blind. It suddenly occurred to me how stupid of a decision it was to drive down this road. The only thing marking the railway crossing was a simple crossbuck sign with no signals. I had a feeling I was near the crossing based on the amount of time I’d been on the road when compared to previous trips. I decided not to drive any further in fear I might drive into another car or a snowbank.

As I sat there with the car in neutral, thinking over how stupid this move was, I heard the blare of a train whistle.

Holy sh*t.

The engineer pressed down on the the whistle with a long-short-short-long sequence. After each sequence ended, I could hear the train approaching closer on the tracks. Did I already cross over the tracks? Or not? Was I parked right over them? It was a level train crossing. Snow would have filled in and packed the tracks, removing any non-visual cue in the car as to where they actually were. There was simply no way to tell.

I heard the long-short-short-long sequence every few seconds, each time growing louder and clearer as the train approached. Terrifyingly louder and clearer.

Should I stay where I am? Or move?

If I stayed where I was, I would have absolutely no control over if the train was going to hit me.

Screw that proposition. If I was going to lose this bet, I wasn’t going to lose it without a fight. I’d rather die from running into a train than die from doing nothing at all.

I pressed down on the accelerator. The car lurched forward for a few seconds only to stop hard. I’d driven into a snow bank.

That news actually made me feel a bit better. The railway crossing has no snow banks! So… I was definitely clear of the tracks… but how far away from the tracks was I?

The whistle blared one more time. It felt like it was right on top of me. The sound pierced my soul. I waited for the lights to go out… as I asked forgiveness for all of my bigger sins…

… then, I heard the sound begin to recede, replaced with the familiar, soothing clacking of boxcar wheels on rails.

After the train passed through the crossing, the wind subsided and I could suddenly see clearly again all around. The car was stuck in the snowbank about 100 yards from the tracks. I’d wedged it in real good. Time for a walk to the nearest farmhouse to call in for a tow; I’d remembered there was one on the right about a quarter mile away.

As I was layering on winter clothes to prepare for my hike, I looked down the road again to the tracks and wondered: How could I have possibly thought the train was right on top of me when I was so far away from it?

Here’s an experiment to try the next time you are stopped close to a rail crossing, waiting for the train to pass with its whistle blowing.

Oh this is easy – back in January of 1996 I was in college and a bit of an idiot. Being 19 I also was not of legal age so I always had to find someone to buy beer. A buddy had a friend in the small town of Gresham, Nebraska and I had a Honda CRX with a full tank of gas. Threw another buddy in the back of the car with the snow falling, told both buddies’ wives we’d be back soon and headed out.

About 5 miles between Seward and Utica it really started coming down. About 5 more miles and it was a complete whiteout. Complete and utter whiteout.

So there I was driving a Honda CRX in a blizzard with 0 feet of visibility and two other idiots in search of cheap Busch Light. It got to the point where Buddy #1 had the passenger door open telling me where the white line on the right side of the road was as we drove towards what we hoped was civilization somewhere. I literally had 0 visibility, it was well below zero, and we were in a CRX in a blizzard (did I mention that part yet?)

Finally we made it to Utica where the gas station was open and packed with other travelers. We stayed for awhile but eventually decided that hey, we would drive into Utica where Buddy #1’s father in law had a warehouse with a wood stove that we could hang out at instead of sitting with a bunch of annoying other people.

We made it about six blocks before the CRX got wedged into a snowdrift (and by snowdrift I should mention it was probably six to eight inches) out of sight of the gas station. I didn’t want to leave the car, two of us were only wearing hoodies, and we were too far from the warehouse. So we sat, and decided just to hang out in the car smoking cigarettes.

Of course that idea faded when we realized that after it had basically been running for the past six hours (this was now well past midnight) the car had about a quarter tank of gas, so it was a run for 15, shut off for 30 kind of situation.

Eventually, after 2-3 hours, we finally got free and joyously made our return back to the gas station where we waited on morning.

On the way back filled with jubilation of the sun shining and surviving the night we all three were quickly humbled when we learned about the CRX’s awesome tendency to randomly swap ends the second the brakes were touched on slick roads.

Then with our hindsides firmly clenched we quietly made the trip back to Lincoln at 25 mph smoking a pack of cigarettes.

The other was in my 1996 Thunderbird. Leaving work at 4 pm on a Friday, driving from Sikeston to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, a distance of 36 miles and normally about 40 to 42 minutes. I had two co-workers in the car with me.

Freezing rain had began around 3 pm. The roads had not been pre-treated, but doing so would have been pointless due to the rain. Anyway, I’m lumbering along at 30 mph on a sheet of ice otherwise known as I-55. All is well until I realize there is a long hill and I get nervous about traction. Just keeping it plugging along, I make it up the hill despite seeing all the 4x4s and FWD cars that have ran off the road. After one hour, fifteen minutes, I finally arrive at the commuter lot and drop off my two riders.

The tough part of getting across town began. It was now dark and the streets were deserted and slicker than the interstate. Mentally calculating the various routes back to my house, I choose a route that is actually longer but flatter – except for one place. When I finally get to that hill, I slowly accelerate to gain some momentum for climbing this ice covered hill. Mid-way up, I simply grind to a halt and start sliding backwards towards a row of parked cars (yes, there were many cars parked at the curb). I shift the Thunderbird into reverse and cut the wheels just enough to avoid hitting anything. Getting to the bottom, I make another attempt up the hill, this time using the middle of the street.

This second attempt went much better as I spun and sputtered my way up. It was then smooth sailing until my then very steep driveway. Seeing Mrs. Jason had cleared it (she is such a wonderful woman) I aimed through the front yard and into the driveway and into the garage.

It had taken two hours to get back. The Thunderbird stayed parked until Monday.

Saturday we had fog, which turned into drizzle and temperature dropped until roads turn to ice. Interstate was blocked by accidents. City, County and State Highway Patrol were all too busy to help any more accidents. One person died in a roll over.

I had planned to go to the grocery store, but changed my mind when I found the driveway icy on my way to get my mail.

Was an attendant in a Navy ambulance that was half flipped on the road from Argentia to St. Johns Newfoundland. I agree with Lincman about driving there. Carrying the body of a Spanish merchant seaman who had been recovered from a life raft by our coast guard. The front right tire caught a snow drift in the road (bad plowing), the rear end kicked out and when we were reversed in the road it just went over. It was an old flathead six power wagon made into a cracker box ambulance. Sort of top heavy, I guess.

I trekked for help and the driver (his fault anyway) stayed with the vehicle. Our public works truck came, hauled us upright, and we continued. When we hit the TCH after 40 miles of rock paved road the transmission burned out. Another ambulance backed up to us to transfer the body. A car came over the hill and became disoriented thinking he was on the left side of the road. He went off into the right ditch. Barely missed us and would have created a whole mess of dead bodies had he hit. Probably the hardest 90 miles I ever traveled and one time that I did not make my own bad luck.

St. Louis, Almost exactly 33 years ago. We got hit with 22 inches of snow. Was snowed in with friends at our favorite bar. Dug out the cars the next morning, when only 4 whhel frives and plows wer making there way around. We had my then 2 year old Audi 4000 Saloon. As we lived only a mile away ,we decided to go for it. This was only a FWD car, not a Quattro. However, it performed admirably. Never got stuck, though it tended to run “dog Style’ the rear wheels crabbing left or right as we proceeded. Don’t believe we actually touched pavement the entire distance. Another friend left right before us. in his bright yellow 72 Pinto Runabout. That was a sight. as it would scramble atop the snow then disappear as it seemed to sink into a drift, only to scramble up the next pile of snow. he also made it home. I was not overly surprised to see our Audi have little to no difficulty. but a Pinto?….We just figured the thing just did not know it couldn’t.

Probably the scariest was in January of 1984, coming down Rt 29 into Allentown PA in my slightly beat up 76 Courier pickup. Rt 29 is a 2 lane road, down a fairly big hill. It had been raining, and about halfway down I wondered why everyone was going so slow, way below the 45 mph limit. I don’t recall exactly what tipped me off, but soon I realized the whole road was black ice. Fortunately I remembered the proverbial raw egg on the brake pedal and just eased down the hill to where it crossed the Interstate. Had to go into a McD’s to try to calm down a bit. At that point they closed the Interstate for a few hours. I finally made it to Binghampton at about 1am. (As an aside, I have never used a salt shaker in a McDs again after watching what a toddler was doing to one in that restaurant while her family also waited for the road to open.)
The other story was rather more amusing. You’ve probably heard about “lake effect” snow in western New York. Buffalo of course gets dumped on, but there are a few places further east, just north of Syracuse, that get it too. You’d be driving on a clear dry road, and within 2 miles be on two narrow tracks in the snow with 100 foot visibility. 20 miles later, the reverse happens.
January 83 several of us were driving back up to college in Potsdam NY. We stopped in Syracuse for gas, and there was perhaps 6″ of snow on the ground, which seemed odd because the Philly-area TV stations had breathlessly talked about the huge storm in NY State. Perhaps 20 miles further up I-81, we saw a car partly off the side of the road with a little old lady outside looking at it. Being big, strong (?) college guys, we stopped and offered to help her get the car back on the road. The left front wheel was hanging a few inches over the shoulder of the road. My buddy led the way to the front of the car, and stepped off the road, assuming that there was 6″ of snow as in Syracuse. Bu instead he went up to his waist. We offered her a ride to the next exit…
Of course that’s not an issue now – it’s 75 f and sunny here today. 🙂

Many years ago Fast Eddie Rendell came into the restaurant I was working in, rubbed elbows with the boss, and told us that we were welcome to use his luxury box at the First Union Center for the upcoming Flyers game.

The night of the game there was a serious snowstorm. I had three other guys in my 1993 Escort in whiteout conditions. The other car, a 1988 Acura Integra, was being driven by my fearless friend who simply drove like conditions were great. He beat me by almost an hour each way.

4 hours each way between Harrisburg and Philadelphia. For a game involving a team that I hated with every ounce of my being. All so my boss wouldn’t appear to be ungrateful to a Governor that only ever cared about Filthydelphia and couldn’t care less about a Republican business owner from Harrisburg, cheesesteak shop or no. I was white-knuckling it the whole way in both directions. Every time I got passed it felt like my car was going to spin. Every time I goosed the gas it aimed for the shoulder.

To say I was scared out of my mind would be an understatement. And this coming from a guy who once pulled the e-brake doing 70 during a snowstorm while going into town to see what would happen (12 rapid 360s into a grocery store parking lot, for the record). I wasn’t easily scared, but the memory of that night still makes me shudder.

In late January 2011 the Southern Tier experienced a cold snap so when it was about -20F around 1-2 in the morning I took my Voyager for a drive. I live in a cell phone dead zone so when I decided to attempt drifting on a back road and got stuck I could have been royally screwed. Even with decent winter gear walking a mile or more could have been deadly and a leaky exhaust system meant sleeping with the engine on was out of the question. Lucky for me I managed to utilize floor mats, 1st gear, sand, and rocking the Minivan so eventually I got free. Cannot remember, but at one point while she was in 1st gear I might have been pushing the accelerator with one hand while pushing the Minivan with the rest of my body because I really did not want to win a Darwin Award.

Knowing there would likely be great skiing over the weekend (sometime during the winter of ’73-74) anywhere near the Tug Hill Plateau in Central NY, we left Morrisville State College on a Friday afternoon, having blown off classes after noon, with a my ’69 Ford Custom loaded with students (getting loaded) and gear. It was already snowing and blowing, but we were determined to get some excellent skiing on what was predicted to be a major dump, so we pressed on, oblivious to the hazards we might face getting there. All we knew was that we HAD to get there and we hoped we would get snowed in for the weekend.

We had gotten onto the last long stretch of road that would get us to the ski area (don’t remember which one, only that it was close to Oswego) but were by then in a full blown blizzard with near constant white-out conditions. We began to hit drifts on the road that the old Custom had trouble clearing and finally came to a sudden stop on a whale of a drift- all four wheels were off the pavement! Uh-oh. We opened a fresh round of beers (Knickerbocker Natural, iirc) and considered our fate. We had another round, and then another. Oh-no! We were running out of beer and luck! Eventually, a state snowplow came from the direction we’d faced. We were blocking the road, of course, and the driver was livid! He read us the riot act, claiming that the road had been closed, and WTF are you doing out here you stupid kids! Not true, we countered, no one or nothing had prevented us from taking this road, and that’s the truth, because it was. He finally calmed down and agreed to pull us free if we turned around and followed him to the nearest town. Considering the alternatives (there were none, as he threatened to call the State Police), we agreed, reluctantly and by no means unanimously. We had some tense moments getting back to the campus, but made it safe and sound, and relatively sober, but not much wiser.

Since posting this I’ve remembered several details. It was a 6 cyl, with a two speed auto, and of course only one wheel capable of driving the rear wheels in limited traction situations. I had some decent tread on the rear snow tires, but the fronts were worn. The car pulled to the right due to a slightly bent frame and/or steering linkage from hitting a curb in an empty parking lot one snowy night while ‘practicing’ four wheel drifting (long before drifting became ‘a thing’). The heater was adequate but without A/C (that car was a stripper if there ever was one) the defrost only really worked on the windshield. If any passengers wanted to see the sights they needed to scrape the ice from the inside of their windows. Other than the snowplow, we never saw another vehicle on that road, and there were very few homes, as I recall. it was a lousy day to be traveling, even for seasoned Central New Yorkers. Despite a lot of macho posturing and false bravado, I was pretty worried by the time we got on that road, but there was no way I was going to turn back voluntarily without full support from the group. Once we were hung up on the drift, I knew better than to run the engine due to the dangers of asphyxiation, and it got pretty damn cold during our wait. I learned soon enough to just stay put until storms like that passed and the roads were cleared, because even the ski areas have trouble getting their staff there for basic services.

It was 1985, I was a mere whippersnipper, I undertook my first European trip from Tasmania. Of course, it was winter, I drove from Frankfurt to Salzburg to Mulhouse to Paris to London and back to Frankfurt.

It was the trip from Rosenheim to Mulhouse that I remember as my most terrifying ever – blinding snow, a manual Opel Kadett, SUMMER tyres and no chains. I drove along the alps, then came across a huge traffic jam near Titisee-Neustadt, so turned left and went mountain bound through Shoenau in Schwarzwald to Basel then back north to Mulhouse.

I vividly recall the front wheels locking up in first gear going down steep inclines, and buses whipping left to right coming up towards me. I really thought I was going to die.

I graduated from college in December in Muncie, Indiana, and had to make a 150-mile drive south to get home with my wholly-unreliable beater ’87 Tempo loaded to the gills with everything I owned. A winter storm raged throughout the day, putting about an inch of ice on the roads and about 7 inches of snow everywhere it could. With all-seasons on, I decided to avoid the interstates and take state highways, and I crawled along the first half of the trip never getting more that 25-30 MPH. My parents followed in their ’73 Cutlass and while they had ice studs, they only had a marginally easier drive. The trip normally took about 3 1/2 hours, but it took that long just to do the first 80 miles, and it felt like I was just sliding along the ice with only partial control the entire way. Finally I got far enough south to leave the worst of the road conditions behind, but it was a harrowing trip.

Our most harrowing travel story was in December, 2001, a trip to STL over the holidays. We left in a snowstorm in our 1999 Dodge Stratus, the car was packed to the gills – every nook & cranny was stuffed. Wifey, our two kids and me.

45 mph max every once in a while where I could see pavement, but mostly following tracks in snow-covered I-74 all the way to Indianapolis, then not too bad to Terra Haute, but wound up in black ice all the way to Effingham – avg. speed = 14 mph! Many cars & trucks in the median. I stayed well behind a semi, figuring I could stop long before he could – and that was put to the test! The truck jammed on his brakes, I jammed on mine and all four of us’ eyes were as big as biscuits as we steadily slid toward the semi trailer’s rear bar! We stopped in time and I gave him even more room. We got off I-70 at Effingham for a much-needed rest and calming-down. After that, lo and behold, the road was clear of ice the rest of the way in save for snow drifting over the road. The temp was around 2°. One L-O-N-G day!

Another snow storm was coming, and on the early morning of Dec. 25, we got out fast! Very cold, and by the time we got to Indy, the snow was falling and chased us the rest of the way home to Cincinnati. A safe, but nervous trip. Very cold, and few places were open and we needed gas, but found a Travel America truck stop open just west of Indy, so that was a good thing.

Since then we don’t travel long distances in winter anymore. I even err on the side of caution for my commute nowadays. When the weather is snowy or icy, I stay home and go in a little later when the roads have been treated and/or plowed and all the riff raff has gone. The added risk just isn’t worth it to me. If the storm hits at go-home time, I just hope and pray and take my time.

Our preferred route from Greenville, NC to Ames IA is about 1300 miles. Day 1 of 2 started fine. But near Greensboro, NC the freezing rain started. It is so much fun watching North Carolinians driving on ice. There were pick up trucks and cars slip-sliding every which way coming down on the other side of I40. I had to slow down to about 35 to 40 miles an hour in our Ford Aerostar, XLT, rear wheel drive. We made it all the way to Georgetown, KY. That was tough and tiring. Having 2 toddlers and wife in the vehicle only added to the tension.
The second day started on ice and ended on ice with nothing but ice in between. There were plenty of vehicles in the ditches and I had several slides that could have send me there as well. Two days of white knuckle driving for about 1100 miles on ice was indeed the most harrowing winter ride ever for me.

I wasn’t driving, but in about 1987 my father, brother and I drove from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. My father had just bought his lightly-optioned Monte Carlo SS.

On the way back, we cut through the Poconos and came to a dead stop. Cars were lined up for miles. We couldn’t figure out what was going on until my dad opened the door and stepped onto the pavement. Whooops! Frozen asphalt. Why we didn’t have a tank slapper in that SS is beyond me.

In the first big snowstorm of 2009 I was able to get my Regal almost all the way home. It refused to go up the hill to my house. I got it as close as I could to the side and just left it. I can walk to work anyway. I got plenty of snow driving experience when I lived 25 miles south of here

Minor note: After first getting my license I played in the snow in Mom’s Torino at a local school. A misunderstanding as to the effects of ice and sliding, and in two shakes I had the car over on it’s side in a gully. A $25 tow truck call later (it was 1973) and all that was hurt was my pride.

Medium note: Had my first new car maybe 3 months when I lost my shit on a L-O-N-G downhill section of the Wilbur Cross parkway. My car must have completely spun around 4-5 times before I came to a rest at the bottom of the hill, every corner and panel damaged.

Tragic note: My then girlfriend and I were driving my car from Texas to upstate NY and we got caught on I-90 in a lake effects blizzard. Highway reopened the next day but everyone was advised to creep along; we were heading to the crest of a hill going 30-35 mph when a black Jag sedan blows by us going maybe 60. He crests the hill and we see his brake lights go off as his car disappears over the crest. We made our way up finally and start heading down the hill where we see a small pile-up, the downside of the hill pure ice. Everyone is running to the Jag, which had flown sideways under an 18-wheeler. Everything was missing from the door handles up, including the occupants too. Tragic, and disgusting to witness as well.

The last long trip I took in my ’87 Cadillac Brougham before moving to Manhattan was to take the February 2010 NYS Bar exam in Albany to enable just such a move from Connecticut. It was a beautiful sunny drive up. On the second day it began to snow heavily in the afternoon and I was glad I had reserved a third night, rightly thinking I’d kick back after the exam. I remember partying with some Northern Irish kids who had come over to take the exam. The next day it was still snowing hard but I had to get back to Connecticut. The NYS thruway was an unholy mess of ice and snow. I’m creeping along (also hungover from the previous evening’s revelry) in this big, floaty Cadillac at about 35, with overdrive locked out, looking at tractor trailers 50 feet into the woods that had come down the hills too fast. It was white knuckles all the way with that thin bakelite steering wheel. The snow had set up west of the Hudson in an unusual pattern, as you crossed into Connecticut it switched to freezing rain. I remember crossing at I-84 and being terribly afraid I would not be able to stop the car. Somehow, I made it and rolled into the New Haven area in pouring rain. I stopped and had a huge pizza before driving east to my parents’ house. I had not stopped to eat the whole trip and was shaking from adrenaline and hunger. It would have been a four hour drive, but in those conditions it took 7 and felt like 12.

Driving in a whiteout, on a completely snow covered road, is routine in the west Michigan snow belt where I lived for 40 years. The time it became extra special was motoring up I-94 toward Mount Clemens in the predawn gloom, with maybe 5″ of newfallen snow on the freeway, in my Renault Le Car.

Of course, the freeway had not a hint of having seen a plow, so the little 145/80-13s were being pulled around by ruts in the snow. I had a firm grip on the thick rimmed, small diameter BWA wheel and was correcting the lurches with the reaction speed of a mongoose…..until….

The freeway is three lanes wide at that point, with a concrete barrier on one side and a deep gully on the other. Someone must have had a lurid moment and left a big rut at a sharp angle to the road as the Renault snapped 90 degrees right, leaving me staring at the gully. Correcting for the skid, the car snapped 180 degrees left, leaving me staring at the concrete wall. Correcting again, it snapped 90 degrees right. Besides showing both door handles to the traffic approaching behind me, and probably using all of the three lanes of width, the gymnastics had scrubbed off all the speed and I was stationary and pointing in the right direction. Dropped the car into first and proceeded on my way.

I drove from northwest Iowa to Minneapolis Minnesota. They had a sever cold snap that day and it lasted for a couple weeks if I remember correctly. I was driving a tired old 2WD Ford Ranger with a small 4 cylinder. It was a base model, plain jane version. The temp dropped to 40 below zero not counting the wind chill. The engine was making barely enough heat to keep a small patch of windshield ice free just above the dashboard about the size of a dinner plate. I had the passenger plug up the defroster vent on his side of the cab to try to boost the heat to my side. We were wearing arctic clothing and still froze. By the time we were in Minneapolis, there was more than a sixteenth inch of ice on the INSIDE of the windows.

I’m in north eastern Nebraska doing some work in a small one-motel, one-gas station town. The job is about 4 days long and its the last day, almost finished. I check out of the motel room and go to finish up the job. At one point, someone comes and tells me the snow is getting bad and I better either get a motel room or get outta town while the roads are passable. I hurry up and load up my truck and start to take off. I get to the edge of town and pull into a gas station to fuel up.

The station attendant tells me to forget it. They just got word the department of roads big snow plow is stuck about a mile out of town. They have to wait for the big snow blower truck to come get him out and that will take several days.

I go back to the motel and find out they are all booked up because people are stranded in town. They tell me to go to the town hospital. I spent the next 3 days sleeping in a hospital bed waiting for the snow blower truck to show up.

When I finally get word the road out of town is passable, I am gone in 5 minutes. Tell ya what though, the snow was more than 6 feet deep on either side of the road and in many places they only plowed one lane down the center of a two lane highway. Several times I saw the back end of a car sticking out of a 6+ foot tall wall of snow. The cars were completely buried.

I’m driving east, late at night, in western Nebraska on a two lane highway. A horrible north wind kicks up and it starts to cool off fast. Then it starts to rain. Horizontal rain. Then it starts to sleet. Then it starts to snow. In 20 minutes it goes from 40 degrees to 30 degrees. I get behind a very old farmer in a ratty old pickup doing about 30mph. I start to cuss because I want to be in Iowa as soon as possible. I pull out to pass him. Off in the distance there is a semi truck coming the other way. I get almost far enough in front of the old farmer to pull back into my lane when my speedometer jumps up 20MPH even though my truck is starting to slow down.

shit. Losing traction.

Then the back of my pickup swings to the left and I am going down the wrong side of the 2 lane highway at a 45 degree angle and there is a semi truck coming straight for me. My passenger puts his feet on the dashboard, his head between his knees, and starts screaming. He has already decided we are goners. Lucky for me, that old farmer I was just cussing a few seconds before, is paying attention. He slows way down to give me a chance to get out of the semi’s way. But unfortunately, I got no traction. Well, as I’m sliding down the road at a 45 degree angle with the back tires spinning, the back tires suddenly grab a clean patch of pavement. I’m pointed at a 45 degree angle to the ditch on the right side of the road when tires grab and that’s exactly where the truck goes. I go down into the ditch, up the other side of the ditch, airborn, and then down onto an empty dirt field.

Nothing like some of the stories but I have two that I was at least a little scared.

The first was over 20 years ago while driving my 50 F-1 on the 3/4 ton Travelall chassis sitting on mud tires I had gone with my tow dolly to pick up a car. Things were fine when I headed out and then all of a sudden it started snowing heavily and I was approaching a down hill with a nice long curve. People coming up the hill were sliding into the down hill lane and some people going down the hill were slamming on thier brakes. I had not choice but to brake fairly hard and when I did that car on the dolly pushed the rear end right around so I was going sideways. The car coming up the hill at that point was an old Rabbit with the good old 5mph bumpers. He stopped and my L rear tire just tapped his bumper. He backed away and with the 4wd I was albe to get it straightened out and proceeded on. At the bottom of the hill there was next to no snow and by the time I made it to the freeway there was no snow.

The other was another freak snow storm. I was heading home from work in my Traveltop Scout which I had thankfully just installed a set of Lock-O-Matic hubs. Things were normal until all of a sudden I crossed a line in the road from no snow to snow on the road and it coming down hard. Traffic came to a stop and when I tried to inch forward it started to slide sideways. I reached down and pulled the lever into 4 hi. Traffic inched along occasionally. After traveling about 50ft in 20 minutes I went for the shoulder and made my way to the next exit which was a nice uphill so many people were avoiding it. Once I pulled off the main road and to a safe untraveled area I got out and switched the hubs from auto to lock. The rest of the way home up and down several hills on carefully selected roads I dodged many cars sliding every which way or just sitting crossways in the middle of the road. More than once it took driving over the sidewalk to keep making progress. All told it took about 1 1/2 hours to make the second half of my normally 25 min drive home.

Well nothing like the epic tales above but it was unpleasant enough. Autumn 2000, a friend of mine decides to go to the Nürburgring to do a few rounds with his modified 71 Lotus Elan +2 and asks me whether I want to hop along. I was at uni at the time but offers like this don’t come my way every day. We left Oxford, UK, very early in the morning to get to the first Dover-Calais ferry and made it through France and Belgium in good time. It was partly cloudy but dry at the ‘ring and we managed to get on the track (and left totally awestruck by what the locals were doing with Opels and VWs, never mind the heavy boys with M6s, Z3 coupes and other similar machinery), have our fun and then decided to go to the main village (Adenau?) to eat something. When we got out of the restaurant everything was white; in a moment of ignorance we decided to go back to the bed & breakfast which was at another village situated far higher up the hill. Of course we lose traction halfway to the top (no big surprise here, the car was on essentially threaded slicks). And then the Lotus dies. My friend tries to start it but no such luck: the battery is already half dead due to a generator which was crapping out and the engine is a modified high compression one, so that was a forgone conclusion. We then realise we are miles from anywhere, have only moderately warm clothes, notice how cold it is and that none of us has a mobile phone. We get out of the car to try and orient ourselves when a local appears coming down the road, looks at us with a dumb expression on his dumb face and… continues driving. We gain some warmth by swearing and cursing but the situation is not getting any better. Suddenly I have a good idea (does not happen very often) which is to push the car back a bit until it’s free and try and restart it in reverse. It just – and I mean just – about works, and with great difficulty we somehow manage to turn it and drive back v e r y slowly to the village, where we park it. We get a lift back to the B&B with a local and his G/F in an old FWD Opel Kadett with proper snow tires and someone who knows the road… The next day we return, start the car and by that time the road is already cleared so we go back, pack our stuff and return to England through the sleet and rain.

Funnily enough, in all my time in Austria I never got into such situations, perhaps due to combined facts of snow tires (everyone uses them during winter due to insurance requirements) and my cars all being front heavy FWD devices (e.g., Audi 100 (non-Quattro) and Ford Escort diesel). I had snow chains in the trunk but never put them on – not even when I drove to visit family in Stubaital, Tirol (which as Paul will confirm, gets its share of heavy snow)…

Driving Rabbit Ears Pass in Colorado at 9,000+ feet in a -20 degree whiteout in 2007.

I literally drew the short straw and was the DD for the night. We were staying on the other side of the mountain from Steamboat and met some friends on the slopes. For some apres-ski excitement, we went to a Mexican restaurant with elephantine margaritas. If I’m the DD, I usually won’t drink anything as it only increases cost and doesn’t make being a DD any less sucky. Plus, I thought I could hustle the 2 hrs back to the Condo with full faculties.

This was a very prescient decision as I was even ordered a few beers but turned them down.

I had no idea what the weather was doing outside, and it was snowing pretty heavy when we left around 10pm. As we climbed, the snow got worse and worse. Soon, visibility was zero and there were times I couldn’t see the hood of the car.

Rabbit Ears pass has no hard shoulder, and stopping would be fatal. We were fully committed to travelling the pass. It was so bad I had drunk passenger #1 zoom the GPS in all the way so he could be a rally-style navigator feeding me information about forthcoming turns.

Adding to the terror were the CDOT snow plows that came barreling down the pass. I could only see the strobes flashing and had no idea if they were in my lane, if I was in their lane, if they were heading towards or away from me. It was utterly terrifying. This resulted in heavy steering input when I got about a second to determine if the plow would clip me or pass harmlessly by. At one point, we were following a semi, but it literally disappeared and we never saw it again. I don’t know if he sped up or pulled off somewhere I couldn’t see. It was surreal.

Adding to all of this, Only the Good Die Young came on the radio (we were ~25) during the worst of the worst.

By the time we came down the other side, I was thoroughly exhausted and the adrenaline wore off my friends. They promptly passed out, leaving me to relive the excitement alone.

Topping this off, on Hwy 40 through the valley (arrow straight), I thought it would be funny to come to a full ABS stop screaming. This triggered me to consider if there were deer or other wildlife to be on the lookout for, so I slowed down a bit and refocused. Not 5 minutes later, a glint reflected from the brights. I started hauling the car down, and a gigantic elk was just wandering down the highway. It was unbelievable.

I wasn’t feeling charitable since that was the worst straw-draw of my life, so when we finally got back around 1am, I pulled the car way up the drive in the place where we were staying, totally surrounded by trees and snow. Then, I quietly closed the door and went to bed, leaving the drunks to wake up in a frosted-over car with no driver in the middle of the woods in the dead of night.

This adventure also made me re-consider my unspectacular church attendance.

Must be nice to only have 2 ft drifts. After last night’s storm here in Atlantic Canada, we officially have about 150 cm (5 feet) of snow on the ground. Over 4 feet of that has fallen in the past 7 days, with another 20+ cm on the way for Thursday. The snow on my front lawn is almost up to my shoulders.

Anyway, on to the story. After I graduated college, I was living in a small city about 70 miles from where I grew up, and my wife (then-girlfriend) still lived.

The highway between the two cities was at the time only two lanes, with half of its distance through a large military base (Route 7 through CFB Gagetown). Because of this, there are no houses and really no place to stop if something should happen. It also meant it was completely dark, with no lights anywhere. This was the late ’90s, so even though I had a (rather large) cell phone, there was no signal through much of the base.

It was the middle of winter and we were getting one of our usual snowstorms. I had spent the weekend at my mother’s house, but needed to get back to work for Sunday, so I decided to drive through the blizzard. At that time, I was driving a 1992 Saturn SL1 with snow tires, thankfully.

Those who know the Saturn SL of that era probably also know how good they were in the snow, when equipped with proper tires. However, the downfall of that wedge shape was how low the front of the car was.

To make a long story short, a drive that would normally take one hour took 4 hours. The snow drifts were so high in spots that the snow was blowing over the hood of the car. No one dare pass me, and I had quite a line of cars behind me, following in my tracks. It was snowing so hard that the headlights were basically useless for more than a few feet. I’m surprised I didn’t drive straight into the ditch.

By the time I arrived at my apartment building, the lot hadn’t been plowed and there were 2 cars stuck in the driveway. I drove right past them and into my spot, that car was so good. Don’t worry, I helped get them out. 🙂

It was a very stressful drive that I will never forget. The next day I checked out the car and the entire engine bay and front bumper area was packed with snow. I needed to clean the snow out of the air intake / filter as well.

Is it wrong that I want another car like that? In my 4×4 truck, there just isn’t as much excitement anymore. 🙂

In the Puget Sound area it takes rather freaky weather conditions to get lowland snow at all; in the place we used to live, it would often snow, and then if we drove down the hill to Port Orchard it would be rain…just a couple of hundred feet of altitude made the difference.

I don’t have any horrible snow-driving stories to tell, being either not very adventurous or just lucky, but I do remember a time while I was attending college in Des Moines, Iowa, and we decided we just had to go to an away basketball game in Minnesota just across the border. There were six of us in a then-new 1957 Ford. The temperature was 10 or 20 below zero, and there was a 10-knot wind. With the defroster at the max there was a clear area about 8 inches in diameter on the windshield above each defroster vent; all the other glass was frosted in. It didn’t seem any colder on the way back, but we stopped at some roadhouse to warm up about halfway back. The only other times I’ve been that cold were when I was working graveyard, out on the end of a pier, in a 20-knot damp south wind coming off the bay, with the temperature around freezing, at 3 in the morning with my metabolism at its nightly low point.

Driving across Kansas on I-70 way back in ’83.It was a near blizzard and I was driving my dad’s ’81 Concord when it did a sudden 270 where a highway dept. grader plowed off the packed snow and exposed a nice sheet of ice. Seeing the sliding semi heading for my door didn’t help matters much either. Somehow I got the ass end of the Concord to swing around on the ice in time to avoid having the semi flatten me and the Concord. Serious pucker moment.

This one’s easy. In December 73 I was driving from college in the Twin Cities back to South Jersey for Christmas in my trusty 66 Impala convertible (283/Powerglide). I had made reservations at a Holiday Inn in Angola, IN, for an overnight. Driving through WI, the radio was reporting a major snowstorm heading from IA into IL. The snow started about at the WI-IL line around Beloit, and by the time I had reached the I-290/I-294 intersection in Elmhurst, South of O’Hare airport there were around 6 inches on the ground. I kept going around Chicago into IN, and by the time I was south of Michigan City on the IN Toll Road there was about a foot on the ground and I was having a hard time keeping the car in a straight line. It was pretty late in the evening and at that point I said “screw Angola, I gotta stop”, so I got off the Toll Road and headed to Michigan City. There I found another Holiday Inn with a vacancy (yay! although I would have slept in the lobby if I had to). They called ahead to Angola to cancel my reservation (no charge to my Dad’s credit card. Double yay!), and I got a good night’s sleep. The next morning the plows of the Toll Road Commission had the road cleared, and I had no trouble getting back on the road early.

That’s definitely the most white-knuckly I’ve ever driven, and now that I’m retired I don’t go out until after the snow’s stopped and the county has had a chance to get the roads clear. I consider myself damned lucky I slept in a warm bed that night and didn’t wind up in a ditch alongside the Toll Road or US-421

Last winter, going from Pennsylvania to Boston. Had just stopped by a local U-Pull_It and scored a nice pair of headlights for my Forester – I had planned this and was happy that it worked out. The yard was surreal in the snow, and they closed it early that day and hurried me out, and I could see the snow getting worse and worse. But hey, I’m in a Forester with AWD and ABS, the tires are almost new and I’m a pretty careful driver, so no worries.

On the Interstate, the light traffic is going no faster than 25. Kinda slippery, visibility getting worse, it’s starting to get dark. But I just keep a lot of distance from the car ahead, still pretty confident.

As it gets darker, colder and icier, the cars start skidding more and more. I have passed several accidents and a few cars stuck in snowbanks along the road. Traffic slows to about 15 mph. I drop the transmission into low gear, still no worries.

Then the car ahead of me brakes abruptly. I have plenty of distance, so I barely tap the pedal. Before I know what’s happening, I’m stuck in a snowbank off the right shoulder, facing the traffic, turned 180 degrees. How the heck did that just happen? Forester, AWD, ABS, nearly new tires, 15 mph, tranny in low, plenty of distance, careful and experienced driver… WTF?

I get out, and immediately sink into the snow up to my thigh. I drag myself through the snow around the car, luckily no damage anywhere and I managed to avoid hitting other cars while spinning. Whew! I get out my trusty army shovel and start digging myself out, but it’s laughably futile, I’m just as stuck but a lot more wet and tired. 20 minutes later, the police pull up, yell at me for speeding (?!) and call their local tow truck, which is glad to relieve me of $150 in another 20 minutes.

Back on the road, still doing 15 in low gear, passed several more accidents, snowfall heavier, outside darker, knuckles on the wheel whiter. Then there is a fairly sharp curve. I slow down to 10 – and still start to slide. Trying to remember to accelerate out of the skid – no dice, the car starts doing 360s down the highway, comes to rest sideways in the center, blocking all three lanes… and stalls! I’m looking out the window on three lanes of cars and a big semi barreling right at me. Time shifts to slow motion. Split-second decision: if the car doesn’t restart immediately, I’m jumping out and running for the median. Aaaaa!!!

The car starts. Bonzai! I stomp on the accelerator and slam into the snow packed around the median just as the semi blasts within a few feet of my rear bumper. I get out, shaking. Again in snow up to my waist, and again, luckily, no damage to the car. Whew and double whew!

A guy in a pickup with a plow pulls over on the shoulder across from me and offers help. I only have $20 left in my wallet thanks to the previous incident. The guy drives off, shaking his head, thinking that I’m a dumb cheapskate. Then another cop stops. This guy is a bit more helpful, expresses surprise that a Forester would spin out like this and asks if I have AAA. Bingo! I had completely forgotten.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, though it took 6 extra hours. When I get home, I try to figure out why an otherwise thoroughly sure-footed Forester would act like such a cow on ice. Nearly new tires! Wait a minute, when exactly did I buy them, has it been… over two years now? Sure enough, barely 1/4 of the tread left on them. I got so used to thinking of them as “recently” replaced, I forgot to check!

Lesson learned. Oh, and I had hurriedly pulled the wrong year headlights at the junkyard.

Around 1990 I was going to California and the road was frozen solid from Vancouver Wa until the bottom of the Sisku’s in Northern California. I was in my 80 Jetta with four studded snow tires and was doing well. But there was some asshole in a jacked up 4WD pickup that was passing everybody. The roads were cindered with pea gravel and little piles were built up between the lanes. He passed me, slowed down and put his tires between the lanes in the pea gravel piles and proceeded to spray my car with gravel and break my windshield and screw up my paint on the front of the car. After a while he went on to the next car and proceeded to do the same. I often wonder (hope) if further down the road he picked the wrong person and had to dodge bullets. That was a real piss off.

I’ve got a snow story involving a Subaru Forester, too. It also involves a dumb, tired kid – me!

It was December 2000. I had just finished a 6-month long internship at Kimberly Clark in Neenah Wisconsin. Rather than rent a Uhaul and car dolly, I bought a 4X8 utility trailer from a work buddy and built some 2×4 walls for it. Loaded it up with all my crap and headed east to State College.

All was well until sometime around 10pm somewhere in rural Ohio. I noticed the trailers brake and market lights were not working right. Figured it was a loose wire. So I decide to pull off the highway and inspect the wiring.

It had snowed two days prior so the roads were clear but the shoulders were not and had packed snow from the plows.